radish times

At 8 am this morning, Peter and I were back on Lafayette Street waiting on the INS line. Everything was just like before - except red tour buses don’t start running that early. The giant building that is 26 Federal Plaza loomed over us and the little park with its puke green benches and painted purple ground repulsed us. The building is 40 stories and has about 2400 windows on each side.

As I was looking up at it, I noticed that way up, about 20 stories high on the north side, there is an air-conditioner. It is absolutely the only one. I pointed this out to Peter, who promptly replied ” Of course. That is the room with the INS person. All the other rooms are empty.”

It certainly seemed this way to us as after 2 hours of waiting we were just approaching Broadway. Peter noticed that the street we wait on, the street that all poor souls with any immigration need in NY must wait on, Worth Street, is also (by special assignation) called the “Avenue of the Strongest.” We found this completely fitting. Everyone else trying to get into the INS perished before getting that far.

With the encouraging thought, we continued to wait. To our great, but premature, pleasure, all of a sudden the line began to move. Within about half and hour we were inside the building!!! Do you understand? We were INSIDE!!!

And what do you think the first thing they told us to do was? You got it! To form a line against the wall and wait. Why we waited for there against the wall watching the security guards strut around like peacocks, we had no idea. But they filled a little pen with a crowd of us and told us that we must wait. They told us the third floor waiting room was full. When asked why we had to wait if we didn’t have to go to the third floor, they told us we DID have to go to the third floor. Really, we didn’t have to but we did have to wait. It was about 30 minutes that we waited but in many ways it was the longest part of the day, at least for me. I was soooo angry and annoyed. After over 2 hours waiting outside - to be put in a little pen inside with no information about why you have to keep waiting was close to being unbearable.

Thankfully, after about 30 minutes, they let us go upstairs. We went up to the eighth floor to room 8-100. There we waited in line for about 40 minutes before someone came out and took our papers and told us to sit down. After that it was about 2 1/2 hours before they called us up….

…. and GAVE US THE STAMP!!!! YEAH YEAH YEAH! SUCCESSSSSSS!!!! Now we can travel and Peter can work and it is done. We don’t have to go back to the INS anytime soon!

While we were waiting Peter and I decided that it would be worth while to create a musical based on visiting the INS. In some way it is an irresistible thought as you are watching all the INS employees pop in and out of little windows like some kind of puppets all afternoon. There would be some differences between our INS musical and another you might go and see. The main idea would be to give people the idea of what it feels like to go to the INS.

In this spirit, while the musical would be scheduled to start at 8 pm… tickets would not be collected until 9 pm. The audience would be formed into a line stretching around the block and every 15 minutes or so the head of the line would be led into the theater, towards something that looked like a ticket collector, then out the side door, around the block and then back to the entrance of the theater to continue waiting. This way, people won’t feel so disheartened. Every now and again they will get to move up drastically…

At 9 pm, people will be let in. The will be forced to check their coats after standing on extensive coat check lines. There will be three or four coat checkers - but only one of them will actually accept coats at any given time. Then the audience will sit in theater for an hour or so before the show actually starts. But, it will constantly seem like the show is just about to start. The lights will dim and blink periodically. Security guards and staff will make commotion and activity in different parts of the theater but they will not speak with audience members. The curtain will jiggle. Music will begin and then stop only to begin again when the lights are dimming - only to be turned back off again very slowly.

At 10 pm, the curtain will open and the the most irritating nerve stretching music will begin to emanate through the theater. Actors will appear in little booths resembling the booths at the INS - but they will work silently on jobs that you can’t quite make up or understand. Every now and then, someone will approach the booths and talk with the actors in them but quitely enough so that the audience can’t quite hear. If you’re thinking that people will begin to leave at this point, you would be right if people could leave… however, the coat check which accepted their coats would be closed until the end of the play and all staff will have vanished. No ushers. No ticket sellers. No security guards. The volume of the irritating music will ever so slowly begin to increase. There will only be one working bathroom stall for the women - and it will be noisome. The men’s bathroom will be closed. At midnight, the actors will leave the stage. The music will cease and one mute coat check person will appear and begin to slowly return coats to their owners. No one will ever be reachable for comments.

Do you know that it is possible to see nine red double-decker sight-seeing buses pass between Broadway and Lafayette if you stand on Worth Street between 11 am and 2 pm on a Tuesday? Have you wondered whether there are

- three companies with buses that leave once an hour, or - two companies, one sending buses every half hour and the other sending buses every hour, or - one company that sends buses whenever they can fill them up?

Well if you don’t know this and you haven’t wondered this, you have probably never tried to go to the INS at 11 am on a Tuesday.

Sadly, we tried that very thing today but we didn’t succeed. In fact, we didn’t even get in the building. At 2 pm they announced that they weren’t letting anyone else in:

“We’re closed now. Come back tomorrow” “HEY YOU! WAIT! WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE CLOSED?!!@#@!#!!” “All the offices are closed to new people now. They…” “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE @#$%@#$ CLOSED, MAN? WE’VE BEEN WAITING HERE FOR FOUR HOURS” “Calm down, sir. You can come back tomorrow” “WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN COME BACK TOMORROW? YOU !@#@#%@#$#. I CAN COME BACK TOMORROW AND WAIT ANOTHER FOUR HOURS BEFORE YOU COME AND TELL ME I CAN COME BACK THE NEXT DAY. HEY MAN, SOME PEOPLE WORK YOU KNOW. ITS COSTING ME MONEY TO STAND IN THIS @#$@#%^%$&$%%#@ LINE…” “Please calm down, sir. I mean, you can get upset if you want, but I don’t understand why…”

Resounding echo in the mind of all people in the line: “YOU ARE RIGHT. YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. YOU HAVE NO CONCEPTION OF HOW ENRAGING IT IS TO WAIT FOR HOURS IN THE COLD WITH THE WIND BLOWING DOWN YOUR NECK FOR NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING AND THEN BE TOLD YOU CAN DO IT AGAIN IF YOU WANT TO.”

And its not just that. Many people waiting in the line just have questions - many of them simple questions. There is no other way to contact the New York Office. They don’t accept phone calls, faxes or e-mails. Some people even stand in that line just to pick up forms.

Anyway, looking on the brighter side, Peter and I tried to think of reasons why it wasn’t as bad as it could have been: - the last time we waited 8 hours for nothing, this time we wasted only 3 - at least this didn’t happen when we were on vacation - and instead of wasting one day we would have wasted two - we never got close enough to the building to be harassed by the guards there - we at least got to turn the corner of Broadway. It was our goal for at least two hours and we finally achieved it - we had time to buy lunch - we wore warm clothes.

Anyway, the moral of the story is: try to avoid having anything to do with the INS (or officially it is now the BCIS - the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, under the Department of Homeland Security, of course)

Unfortunately we cannot yet avoid them. We will try again next week. We decided to go earlier in the morning - although one of the guards told Peter that when he got to work at 5:30 am there was already a line that went all the way around the block (and it is no small block around this Building… it is giant with a little park and everything). The guard thought there were about 1,000 people. So going early may get us in the building but it might not reduce the wait. We will see.

Correction: Please be advised of an error occurring in the April 17th, 2003 update received by you entitled “Even the INS has shining moments.” The title of this update was unspecific and misleading. The INS office in New York City never shines. It has not has one single shining moment or day since its inception all those oodles of years ago. A more appropriate, accurate title would have read “Even the INS has shining moments, except the office in New York which never ever shines even a little.”

So, yes, we are still using cat litter. We are using the absorbing crystals, not to be confused with the clumping kind or the sand kind.

I haven’t written about it recently because I am depressed about it. There are little white, light yellow and dark yellow balls all over the floor in the hall. The dark yellow ones are filled with piss. I could tell you more but you might be eating while reading this.

The Giganitic Petco in Danbury, CT, doesn’t have the big bags. Their small bags are expensive. They don’t carry any French brands. Do you think it has anything to do with Iraq? The small store on 91st street has cheap big French bags but they are half a mile away. I will never buy cat litter there even though I desperately want to. Peter will probably help me with this.

Sometimes the cats are put out and pee on the floor. I am more tired of this than you can imagine… or maybe you can. Cleaning more than 10 puddles of cat urine a year is excessive. If we are talking year to date, I am in the ultra-super-overly excessive category. If we are talking calendar year, I am doing alright.

On the bright side, I guess it smells less. Peter is sure about this. The floors do not feel sandy and gritty (unfortunately though it is possible to puncture the bottom of your foot with one of the little balls… or at least greatly indent it). It is easier to see whether the cats systems are working normally. None of their bowel movements is covered in sand, grit or saw dust. It is not as heavy as other litters.

And… it lasted almost 3 weeks, a week longer than our original hopes. So… it is our cat litter of choice at least for the time being.

While there is still no doubt about the stupidity of the INS, I would like to focus on an extraordinary occurrence which just transpired: the INS correctly processed our recent application — and not only that but they even combined two steps into one and did them both right. )) YEAH!!

If this does not seem like much to you - you cannot have considered the enormity of things they overcome: 1) They didn’t lose the application 2) They didn’t send it to the National Records Center 3) They didn’t misplace the check 4) They didn’t send it to the wrong department causing long delays 5) They didn’t bury it under a stack of papers in an empty office soon to be demolished 6) They didn’t claim to be the wrong department 7) They didn’t enter it into the computer under a different name They didn’t change their procedures and send it back 9) They didn’t put it in the “too hard” box (inside joke, see below explanation)

Just think. I am sure you can come up with at least 100 other things that could have happened. I assure you, Peter and I did while we were waiting for the notice to arrive.

So what it really means is that Peter’s permanent residence has been extended for a year. He has official permission to work and travel. If it takes them longer than a year to process our application, his residence will be automatically extended again. It means that the ball is in the INS’s court - and all we have to do is wait, but for the time being at least we are waiting without the worry that Peter will soon be illegal or unable to travel. Whew!

“Too hard” Box Story - You may or may not know that one of my uncles was a bureaucrat in the army for many years. He used to tell the story that each person would have a “too hard” box on his desk and anything that seemed to difficult to figure out would go in that box for the person who would someday replace him. If you are waiting for a response from some government agency, this story is not even slightly amusing.

In other news… I decided to go to Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. I sent my acceptance and check to reserve a place. It is a two year masters program.

It is a crappy day here. Rainy, coldish, grey and yucky. I have become so spoiled with my three day a week work work. This week I worked Monday, Wednesday and Thursday but I had an open house at Columbia all day Tuesday and I sat in on a class and had a meeting at the New School on Wednesday night. So it was the equivalent of full time work - and it was exhausting.

I want to write something fun and light and free. But somehow I don’t feel like that at all. I have been trying to see into the future - with my mind not my gut - and this usually has the result of stress, anxiety and exhaustion.

The main questions have been about graduate school - which one should I go to and whether I should go at all. I don’t even feel that much like talking to people who were in the programs or those who know about the programs - because I don’t know what it is they would have to say to either convince me to go or convince me not to go. I don’t know what my own decision point is. In some way, I feel that it is useless to try to figure out what will happen in the future - whether I will get a job or not… whether I will have “the right degree”… I can’t touch any of these things.

I find it to be completely beyond myself to evaluate the worthiness of a Masters in Public Policy vs. a Masters in International Affairs for the future of my career. All the points I come up with are so vague and intangible - for example, one point is: a Public Policy degree is a more established, respected one in some circles. Several questions immediately swamp my mind. First, what the hell does that mean? Does it mean that if I want a job in the Governors office in Alabama that a Public Policy degree would be better? Or does it mean that the non-governmental organizations in the Czech Republic have spent long periods of time analyzing the worth of the two degrees and decided not to hire someone with just a Master in International Affairs? Second, will it be a benefit to me to be established and respected? Does it mean that I might get stuck in some notion of the “way things are supposed to be done”? Will I end up uttering things like “I have considered your position, Her ___, but I find that your analysis does not meet the minimal standards to be considered real policy analysis. Therefore I do not consider it, you may go.” The notion that tradition and established are better than adhoc and roundabout does not immediately strike me as true.

So, I can just touch here and now … and in the here and now I want to fluently speak Russian and possibly some other language(s)[see below], I want to learn many things - about the laws and governments and politics of many countries across the world. I want to meet people who are interested in the same things…
[Below: actually my desire to speak many languages is kind of comical. It means that at all times I think of studying two or three languages at a time. I know from experience that this is not always the best idea — but I want it anyway.]